NHL labor negotiations scheduled to resume tomorrow

So much for a two-week break. Just over a week since the last set of failed negotiations, the NHL and the locked-out players’ association will return to the bargaining table tomorrow.

Conversations that restarted Friday between NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHLPA special counsel Steve Fehr produced enough positive movement yesterday to set up another face-to-face meeting in the hopes that it will lead to an agreement to save the hockey season.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman suggested to union executive director Donald Fehr this week that they take two weeks off from negotiations.

The union maintained its desire to keep talking, and now bargaining is back on.

“We can confirm that we have tentatively agreed to get back together on Monday, either late in the afternoon or early evening,” Daly said. “The meeting was requested by the union and it’s their agenda. We will see what they have to tell us.”

Owners and players met for several consecutive days last week in New York, but made little progress.

Negotiations ended in an angry exchange Nov. 9, but bargaining resumed two days later, only to break off again in just over an hour.

Staying apart never appeared to be a good option, and the NHL now seems to agree.

All games through Nov. 30 already have been taken off the schedule. More cancellations are likely within a week, the Winter Classic has been wiped out, the All-Star Game is the next big event in jeopardy, and the whole season could be lost, too, if a new deal can’t be hammered out.

The players have stuck to their position that negotiations are the only way to work out differences, and that they are willing to meet any time the NHL wants to.

The NHL contends that the union has submitted the same proposal multiple times without moving in the league’s direction.

The union says it has agreed to come down from receiving 57 percent of hockey-related revenues to a 50-50 split.

The league wants that to go into effect in the first year of the agreement, while the union wants to get there gradually.

Seven years ago, after the entire 2004-05 season was lost to a lockout, the players’ association accepted a salary-cap system for the first time.

The union feels it shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of the concessions now that league revenues have reached a record high of more than $3 billion for last season.